Developed from the miniscule Scimitar Starfighter, the Spade Drone is a small, multi-role fighter drone developed primarily for fleet defense, which can also be used as an attack drone. It was devised in YE 45.

The Spade is a compact fighter drone designed for primarily fleet defense duties, as well as light attack operations. It is essentially a replacement of the earlier Scimitar Starfighter, taking its role with an unmanned fighter to reduce operational costs and risks to pilots.

Extremely compact, lightweight, multi-role, pilotless fighter craft.

Primarily designed for fleet defense.

The Spade Drone is a roughly bullet-shaped fuselage that features an oversize thruster at the back. It has a pair of comparatively wide, yet narrow-chord wings which serve primarily to hold munitions and accessories. These wings end in pods which have indicator lights on them. additionally, the nose of the probe has four glowing slots which house the craft's primary sensors.

While the Scimitar proved to be an efficient and economical craft for captains of smaller ships to use, it lacked any decent protections for its largely exposed pilot. Due to this, there were scores of reports of customers slaving the scimitar fighters to either larger fighters, or the motherships themselves, to use as drones. As such, it was determined that a dedicated drone variant of the Scimitar made a better candidate for the role the snub fighter currently played, and thus the Spade drone was born.

Small, light, and lacking a pilot, the Spade drone is very fast and maneuverable.

• Class: OI-V3-1A
• Type: Ship defense drone
• Designers: Aerin Tatst, Origin industries
• Manufacturer: Origin Industries Fleet Yards
• Production: mass production
• Fielded by: Origin industries, Independent, etc.
• Price: 20,000 KS

Crew: 0. Maximum Capacity: 0, this ship is an unmanned drone.

• Length: 4 meters
• Width: 4 meters unfolded, 1.2 meters folded
• Height: 1.3 meters, wings unfolded, 2.5 meters, wings folded

• Sublight Engines:.35C forward, .20C omnidirectional
• Range:.5 AU
• Lifespan: 10+ years, with proper maintenance.
• Refit Cycle: once every 6 months

• Damage Rating (Version 3): Tier 6 (Heavy Armor), Unarmored (Tier 7 size)
• Shields: Tier 6 (Heavy Armor, Barrier)

The Spade drone, lacking a pilot, does not need accommodations for one, and nearly all systems have been compacted inside the fuselage.

The Space drone is controlled by a PAWN AI, which is hosed in a pair of X-type modules. This system is completely automated, and subservient to whatever craft it is networked to.

The hull of the Spade drone is made from Durandium Alloy, making it lightweight yet durable. The Armor is quite sufficient for anti-powered armor operations, but may be a little weak compared to other fighters.

• Landing gear: The Spade Drone sports a set of landing skids, one mounted in the nose, and one at each wing root. these skids retract cleanly into the drone and are not visible while it is flying.
• Running Lights: The running lights are a unique design which is computer controlled, and designed to allow for systems of running lights found in places other than Yamatai. They are computer controlled and each of the four lights is capable of running in red, green, or blue. The Lights can be changed on a whim and used to confuse people, or to simply allow the lights to display properly while the ship is flying backwards.
• Hinged Wings: The Spade'svwings are hinged near the wing root, as well as about halfway down the wing.these wings swing upward and inward, locking into place. The wings are held in place, in both positions, with hardened Nerimium pins and locks. The folding mechanism, as well as operation of the pins and locks, is automated, and will lock once the wings are fully unfolded.

The Spade drone uses a version of the PAWN AI, which has been modified as a fully independent operations capable AI, that can make its own decisions in order to execute commands given to it as effectively as possible. This AI is programmed to be subservient to whatever computer system it is attached to, and will only take commands from that computer. This subservience must be manually set, and cannot be reset remotely.

The AI is housed in a pair of X-type modules, which normally share the load of processing from the AI, but are capable of independently running the AI in case one is damaged or disconnected. these two modules are located in different parts of the drone to reduce the chance of both being knocked out at once.

The Spade Drone has an emergency fire suppression system that utilizes a dry chemical foam and/or powder to snuff out flames and turn oxidizers inert in the case of damage that causes a fire, thereby limiting damage to the drone.

The Spade drone utilizes a OI-VX-GP4201 HFT CRUSH system, which provides both propulsion and primary power generation. This system has a double fuel supply, allowing the Spade Drone to operate for up to two weeks without needing to be refueled.

Omni-Directional Vectored Thrusting Taken straight from the Scimitar, Ports are located on every surface of the drone. Connected to the HONEY Fusion Thruster system, they allow the ship to travel up to .20c in any direction without changing the ship's heading; they are capable of halting the ship's forward movement and propelling it backwards within 1/100th of a second. These same thruster ports are capable of flipping the ship end-for-end in the same time span, as well as spinning, rolling, and otherwise controlling the ship. Generally, however, the thrusters do not use the amount of power required for such maneuvers.

The Spade runs the exact same shield system found on the Scimitar starfighter, and will even accept parts taken from a Scimitar as replacements during maintenance.

Similarly to the Scimitar Starfighter, the Spade is capable of mounting a variety of Origin Starfighter Accessories. however, since it does not have to support a pilot, the Spade drone has added extra light-duty hardpoint capacity for extended operations.

• Heavy Lasers: 4, Tier 7 (light Anti-Mecha)
• Mini-missile Batteries: 4, Each mini-missile battery contains 7 tubes which hold two missiles each tube, giving a total capacity of 56 missiles.
• Medium-duty hardpoint: x2
• Light-duty Hardpoint: x6

Kai created this article on 2020/03/29 14:52.

This was approved by Andrew on 2023/02/11.¹⁾